De Blasio: NYC next up for minimum wage boost

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday he wants the city to raise its minimum wage.

“We will send a powerful signal to the people of New York: that we honor work, and that we are committed to making work pay,’’ de Blasio said Monday in his first State of the City speech since his election last November.

Next week, we will ask Albany to give New York City the power to raise the minimum wage in all five boroughs. #SOTC

But he didn’t say by how much — perhaps because the city will have to get an OK from the state Legislature to set its own minimum wage. Cue another battle with Albany: The city is already trying to get state legislators to approve deBlasio’s signature proposal to raise income taxes on the rich to pay for preschool. New York state’s minimum wage is $8 an hour.

De Blasio is also echoing a call from President Obama, who told Congress in his State of the Union Address last month that the federal minimum wage should be hiked from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. New York City already has a “living wage’’ law requiring wages of at least $10 an hour for some projects that receive city economic development subsidies.

San Francisco linked its minimum wage, now $10.74, to the consumer price index in 2004. Voters in Washington state recently raised wages to $15 an hour for workers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and legislation being proposed in Los Angeles would raise wages for hotel workers to $15 an hour.